Democratic vice-presidential nominee Senator Kamala Harris, during her maiden address to the Indian-American community, reflected on her proud Indian heritage and recalled how her mother always wanted to instil in her a "love for good idli."
"Growing up, my mother would take my sister Maya and me back to what was then called Madras because she wanted us to understand where she had come from and where we had ancestry. And of course, she always wanted to instill in us, a love of good idli," Harris said.
Harris, 55, who is the first black to be selected as a vice-presidential candidate of a major party, took a trip down the memory lane, mentioning her "long walks" in Madras (now Chennai) with her grandfather who would tell her about the "heroes" responsible for the birth of the world's largest democracy.
Born to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, California senator Harris, if elected, would be second in the line of succession after Biden.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, 77, scripted history by selecting Harris, an Indian-American and an African-American, as his running mate in the presidential election on November 3. Joined by Biden, she greeted Indian Americans on the occasion of India's Independence Day.
Harris was born on October 20 in 1964, at Oakland in California. Her mother Shyamala Gopalan migrated to the US from Tamil Nadu in India, while her father, Donald J Harris, moved to the US from Jamaica.
